A few tidbits of good economic data and generally better-than-expected profit reports have heated up the market once again on speculation the worst is really over.
Company insiders may be telling us the opposite.
While investors have lifted stocks even higher off the March lows, insiders have been quietly selling lots of shares of their own companies into the strength in the past month.
Ominously, insider sales now stand at levels not seen since late 2007, right before the current bear market began. And history shows that insiders are worth paying attention to, because they're the ones on the front lines.

Report shows job cut announcements in July increased sharply from the previous month - first uptick since January.
The job market is likely to get worse before it gets better -- that adage seems to be ringing true, according a report released Wednesday

The banking system is still intact, though not so much poorer as with new stakeholders who will keep the reins tight. The banking system must have tight reins. Competing for higher rates of returns is not the way to run a bank. There you prosper by improving the quality of your loan portfolio. A good bottom line is a pleasant surprise at the end of the year.
We can be sure that ratios are been hauled back and that all those old loans are been reassessed and resolved as much as possible.
Equities are been sorted out and next years earnings will drive markets.

There is speculation among brokers that a “dollar carry trade” may be evolving. For decades, arbitrageurs would borrow money in Tokyo at zero percent and short the yen. They would then take the “free money” and buy commodities, crude, high yielding bonds and even stocks. With U.S. rates held at zero for months, traders wonder if an American version of the “carry trade” is beginning to evolve.

In this video Jim the Realtor covers the commercial real estate crash in Carlsbad, Oceanside, Encinitas, and Lake San Marcos California.
"But I think what it is all coming down to, I think you can see in this series of foreclosures that it is so widespread, that it's effecting everybody, rich people, poor people, corporations, individuals, big banks, little banks, every type of property, the foreclosures are everywhere." Jim the Realtor

ABC Weekly Consumer Confidence has flatlined, and not only is it down to -49 from last month's reading of -47, it is at exactly the same place it was two months ago.
Declining levels of consumer comfort usually accompany any fall in income and wages and precede drops in consumer spending. A low or falling ABC Consumer Comfort value is considered an early indicator of an economic downturn. As a result, investors, retailers and traders alike all watch the figure for insight into the general health of the economy.
Note: The index incorporates the most recent week's data with the results of the past three weeks, yielding a rolling four week average. Results are calculated as the difference in percent of positive and negative numbers.

It is thus my position that even if you are well under FDIC limits you must move money around now so you have multiple bank accounts and thus if your withdrawals and access to your funds are "rationed" in a similar fashion you will be able to access what you need to pay your electric bill, put gas in your car and buy your food.
Remember, getting your money back doesn't mean getting it all right now, and government agencies can be very inflexible when what they have decided to do conflicts with what you want.
Since the government is not going to do the right thing with regard to these financial institutions and their alleged "assets", say much less crooked accounting and disclosures - a fact that now, two years into this mess, should be the inescapable conclusion reached by anyone with a brain in their head - you need to protect yourself.

GMAC Inc., said Tuesday it posted a wider second-quarter loss of $3.9 billion as it shifted from being primarily an auto and mortgage loan company to an online, retail bank. In the year-ago period, the company posted a loss of $2.48 billion.

The seizure by the FDIC will hit the regulator’s budget to the tune of at least $5.3 bil according to sources within the OTS. This, on top of what’s going on with Colonial bank failing, should wipe out what’s left of the FDIC’s budget

The U.S. will resemble a "banana republic" in 10 years if its fiscal situation stays on the same track, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) warned Tuesday.
Gregg, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, asserted that programs like "cash for clunkers" would pile up to as much as 80 percent of the total U.S. economic output because of federal spending.
"We're going to be like a banana republic in 10 years!" Gregg said during a panel discussion on CNBC. "Sure, Americans want the program. But if you stop and think about it, is it right to do for our children?"

Dear Fellow Patriots I hope you always consider the source when reading anything our government puts out. Keep in mind they have revised the manner in which they report so the reality is things are worse then they say. On to the story...
Personal incomes of U.S. residents fell 1.3% in June, reversing the 1.3% gain in May that was due to a one-time stimulus payment to Social Security recipients, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.
Excluding the one-time payment in May, incomes fell 0.1% in June after a decline of less than 0.1% in May. Incomes are down this year despite the on-going prop to incomes from the stimulus, including tax credits and expanded unemployment benefits.

Half dozen economists who are very concerned about Federal Reserve independence what they thought about Rep. Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Fed.
This was my specific question: “Given that Congress can already grill
the Fed chairman during Humphrey-Hawkins (and occasional other
congressional appearances), how would a GAO really threaten Fed independence in practical terms?”

The GAO audit proposal is from Ron Paul, who
has advocated abolishing the Fed and returning to the gold standard.
Maybe people think that this is his foot in the door, a first step in
the plan. When King Louis 16 called for a meeting of the Estates
General in France, it led to a chain of events that resulted in his
beheading! [how is this on subject ED]

My view is that there is a major difference between general economic questions from Congress to a Fed that isn’t open to a GAO audit and that doesn’t get its budget from Congress, versus a detailed audit
b

Just as banks from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. rushed to raise their forecasts for U.S. growth in coming quarters, Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps warned the economy is in for a “long slog.”
The divergence emerged after the Commerce Department said July 31 the economy has now contracted the most since the 1940s. Benchmark revisions to the department’s National Income and Product Accounts also showed consumer spending has tumbled 2 percent since the end of 2007, a magnitude unseen since the 1980 slump that ushered President Jimmy Carter out of office.
The deeper decline sets the stage for a faster recovery in the second half of the year, said Bruce Kasman at JPMorgan and Joseph LaVorgna at Deutsche Bank. It’s what comes later that worries Phelps and others, including Mark Gertler, the New York University economist who was a research partner of Ben S. Bernanke before he became Federal Reserve chairman.

“The increase of social wealth is not accompanied by a
diminished number of capitalist magnates, but by an increasing number of capitalists
of all degrees.” Eduard Bernstein “The interventionist policy [big
government] provides thousands and thousands of people with safe, placid and
not too strenuous jobs at the expense of the rest of society.” Ludwig Von Mises “There is a profound
contrast between the effect of foreign aid and of voluntary private investment:
Foreign aid goes form government to government.
It is therefore almost inevitably statist and socialistic.” Henry Hazlitt

Markit Group Ltd., the data provider majority-owned by Wall Street’s largest banks, is under Justice Department scrutiny for potential anticompetitive practices ranging from requiring customers to buy bundled services to restricting which trades can be cleared in the $26 trillion credit-default swap market.
The Justice Department said July 15 it was investigating users of credit-default swaps as U.S. lawmakers seek to regulate the $592 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market, which helped worsen the biggest financial calamity since the Great Depression. Trading in OTC contracts provides as much as 40 percent of profits for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, according to research firm CreditSights Inc.
“Markit has been informed of an investigation by the Department of Justice into the credit-derivatives and related markets,” spokeswoman Teresa Chick said July 13 in an e-mailed statement in response to questions from Bloomberg News. Chick declined to comment last wee

Friday’s GDP release was a sight for sore eyes. After experiencing sharp declines in the US economy for three consecutive quarters, the data for Q2 showed a decline of only 1% compared to the 1.5% that analysts were expecting. The news was enough to cause a number of economists to increase their forecasts regarding the “economic recovery” and was helpful in pushing stocks higher throughout most of the trading day.
A 1% drop is significantly better than the 6.4% drop we had in the first quarter right? Actually, the answer is NO! A drop is still a drop. Consider the fact that we had the worst decline in 27 years for the first quarter, and that in the second quarter we were still declining. It’s tough to find a silver lining with this dark cloud, but that doesn’t keep analysts from spinning it in order to attempt to prop up the equity markets. As Mark Twain so eloquently said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” The point is that you can make statistics i

Usually I don't talk about
this. About all I can do is watch events, recognize, identify,
and bite my tongue. Right now a war is raging,
a war over 100 years old, a war to suppress specie (gold and
silver) money and replace it with bank money.

It's easy to write off someone
like me as a monetary crank. After all, the federal government
was after him and there was a long trial and he was acquitted,
but you know, where there's smoke, there's fire. And then there
was a state trial, and he was convicted. Besides, doesn't he
know the economy and finance have progressed so much that they've outgrown silver and gold?

Unless you have ever been the
victim of a US government persecution (sic -- I did not
write prosecution), you cannot even dimly appreciate the
bloodthirsty viciousness of the US criminal justice system and
its thugs. They identify a victim,

The Extendees — which consists of soon-to-be-Exhaustees — gained 25k, raising the total unemployed receiving extended benefits to about 2.66 million people. One year ago, there were only 127 thousand receiving extended benefits.

But we do not have to go to Youtube to enjoy the Jackass genre. We have only to read the news. All over the world the authorities are strapping on their absurd parachutes…and climbing to very high places.